


At Every Turn

by nagi_schwarz



Series: The Oppenheimer Effect [59]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 05:18:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7561918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Multiverse, Rodney McKay + Radek Zelenka, Questioning the man's judgment."</p><p>Radek is dubious about Rodney's decision to bring Tyler to the Ancient Tech lab at the SGC.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Every Turn

“I do not think this is a wise course of action,” Radek said.  
  
“Why? He’s a legal adult, he signed an NDA, and he knows what he’s in for.” Rodney glanced at Radek and smirked. “After all, he watched the video you made. Great performance, by the way.”  
  
Radek rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, you are very funny, I have learned my lesson about not getting into my cups when children are in the house. But he is still a teenager, and I do not think letting him run loose in the lab is wise.”  
  
“He’s not just any teenager,” Rodney said, “he’s one I’m helping raise, and absent some - youthful ebullience, not unlike the kind possessed by John, he’s trustworthy and well-behaved.” He slewed Radek another look. “You’re just jealous that you can’t bring your niece and nephew for take your child to work day.”  
  
“Why could he not go to work with Sheppard or Lorne or Mitchell?” Radek protested.  
  
“He interned with them over the summer,” Rodney said, “and had plenty of experience with them. He’s actually quite brilliant, when he puts his mind to it, and I want him to be exposed to the higher pursuits in life. Not that teaching isn’t a noble calling,” he added when John came into the lab.  
  
John leaned over and kissed Rodney hello, brief and chaste, but Radek looked away anyway.  
  
“So,” John said, “what did you have in mind for Tyler?”  
  
“Just a few bits and bobs,” Rodney said, heaving a box up onto the desk. “Nothing dangerous.” He picked up a ball that had been inert for as long as it had been in storage. Radek had no idea what it was, but he suspected, judging by its bright colors, that it was some kind of Ancient baby toy. Ancient artefacts had been dug up left and right at the Ancient outpost in Antarctica, and a few others had drifted in over the years, like the communication stone picked up by that barber in Indiana, but they were still not much closer to understanding how Ancient tech worked.   
  
Ori tech was definitely related to Ancient tech, but it seemed to have a stronger mental component. If the Ancients had been a force to reckon with in the struggle against the Ori, being able to replicate their tech was a good idea.  
  
“Besides, we need to run more tests to see just how strong his gene is,” Rodney continued. “After all, if it’s not that strong, we won’t need him as a lightswitch often. Where is Tyler?”  
  
John said, “He’s coming. Everyone’s excited to see him.”  
  
Rodney frowned. “Maybe you should have stayed with him.”  
  
“Not a chance,” John said, grinning.  
  
Thirty seconds later, Tyler came skidding into the room, Rodney’s giant cat perched on his head and shoulders, the cat’s collar bauble blinking madly.  
  
“So,” Tyler said, “not many kids come here, huh?” He was breathing hard.  
  
“Rodney,” Radek said, “why is your pet here?”  
  
“Hm? Oh, you said you wanted to run some diagnostics on his collar device.” Rodney held out his arms, and the cat leapt right into them, curled against Rodney’s chest and purred happily. “In the best interest of science, it seemed best to compare diagnostics for when Oppenheimer is and isn’t wearing the collar. Now, Tyler, you remember Dr. Zelenka.”  
  
“Hi, Dr. Zelenka.” Tyler offered a hand.  
  
It was difficult to look at this boy, so slight and small, with such dark skin and dark eyes, and think of him as Rodney’s child, or even Major Mitchell’s child, but Radek had received an email that morning reminding him of his appointment with Tyler G. Mitchell, and Rodney spoke of the boy as Radek’s sister spoke of her own children. So Radek shook his hand and greeted him politely.  
  
“So, what do you need me to do?” Tyler leaned on the workbench the way John did, seemingly having the same disdain for good posture.

“We need you to attempt to initiate certain devices,” Radek said. “And we will measure you for the strength of your gene expression, and also attempt to determine what the devices do.”  
  
Tyler glanced at John. “Is this what you do all day when you come here?”  
  
“Pretty much,” John said. “I mean, sometimes I help Rodney with calculations too, but mostly I just initialize devices.”  
  
“Have a seat,” Radek said, gesturing to one of the work stools, “and try to turn this on.” He reached into the box and handed Tyler a device that looked like a grenade. He turned on the ATA scanner and aimed it at Tyler.  
  
“Hey now,” Rodney began, but Radek shot him a look. Oppenheimer the cat deserted Rodney, leaped across the lab and landed on John’s shoulders, curled around him like a ridiculous fur stole.  
  
As it turned out, the grenade was actually a baby toy, as it emitted gentle harmonic lullabies. Tyler initiated some kind of stopwatch, a food preserver, a voicemail machine, a night light, a text display device not unlike a Kindle, except the words were displayed in midair - Jackson would want more samples of Ancient text, to be sure - and a series of other generally useless domestic items.  
  
“This isn’t so bad,” Tyler said. He seemed pleased every time he managed to make something glow. Some things he couldn’t initiate, either because their power sources were depleted or they were broken (thankfully he was able to tell which). As much as Rodney’s increasing smugness was irritating, having Tyler around was helpful, especially since it freed up Rodney to run diagnostics on the cat’s collar.  
  
“This is probably a baby toy,” Radek said, handing Tyler the brightly-colored ball.  
  
Tyler picked it up, furrowed his brow. The pink panels swung outward, and bright red gas shot toward Tyler’s face. Tyler yelped and dropped the ball, flung himself backward and toppled off the stool. Radek swore and hit the deck. John immediately tackled Rodney to the floor. The cat yowled.  
  
“Tyler!” Rodney cried. “Tyler, are you all right?”  
  
Tyler lay on the ground, limbs akimbo. He must have hit his head quite hard, but he laughed. “My head hurts, except it kinda doesn’t.” He sounded muzzy. Drugged.  
  
“Call medical!” John said. Radek reached up, grabbed the nearest phone off the bench, dialed for a medical team. Oppenheimer batted the ball away from Tyler, hissed at it, and then trundled over to Tyler, curled up beside him and mewled sadly. John and Rodney knelt beside Tyler, checking him over. Tyler was still giggling.  
  
Medics burst into the lab. They loaded Tyler onto a stretcher and wheeled him to the infirmary, John and Rodney on their heels. One of them bagged and tagged the Ancient artefact, and they took Radek with them to test him for contamination.  
  
Radek sat on one of the infirmary cots, hating his life - and Rodney McKay and his erstwhile child - while Dr. Lam and her team ran tests on the lab and everyone who’d been in it. As it turned out, Tyler wasn’t as badly injured as he could have been. And the ball? Was an Ancient medical device. The red spray was laughing gas - hence Tyler’s incessant giggling. Another colored panel dispensed a local anesthetic. Yet another panel dispensed sedatives. Dr. Lam and her team were thrilled.  
  
Tyler was still giggling and petting the cat, who was perched on his chest and who Dr. Lam hadn’t been able to dislodge.  
  
“So,” Rodney said, patting Tyler’s hand, “welcome to Stargate Command. Peril at every turn.”  
  
Radek, unhappy with all of the blood he’d had to have drawn for tests, glared at Rodney. “Thank you for this.”  
  
“Shouldn’t have made assumptions about what was and wasn’t a baby toy,” Rodney said.  
  
“Oh please. You thought that first device was a grenade, same as I did.”  
  
“And yet you asked Tyler to initialize it.”  
  
“A good parent would have stopped me.”  
  
“You wouldn’t know good parenting if it bit you in the ass.”  
  
“Boys,” John said, “let’s just chalk it up to bad luck, be glad that Tyler is safe, and maybe wait till we know a bit more about Ancient design theory before we try this again.”  
  
It was a wise idea. Radek nodded, and eventually Rodney nodded, and they all gazed at Tyler, who was fast asleep, the cat curled up on his chest, and hoped that this was as dangerous as the SGC ever got for Tyler or any other child.


End file.
